


The Cure for Anything

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Indiana Jones Series
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentions of Pregnancy, Yuletide Treat, background Indy/Marion, references to an underage relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28172454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: Marion's life, in snapshots.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 51
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Cure for Anything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seren_ccd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seren_ccd/gifts).



> Thanks to S. for looking it over.

_The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea._ –Karen Blixen

**I.**

Marion didn't care much for school. The teachers were nice, but boring. They couldn't make stories come alive the way her father did when he told them, his words painting vivid pictures of the Spartans defending the pass at Thermopylae, the Israelites vanquishing their foes with the Ark of the Covenant in their vanguard. And the other children were also boring, or stupid, or mean. The girls always wanted to play house, which was fine once in a while, but not _every day_ , and the boys wouldn't let her join their war games. She did most of her learning outside the classroom, and she never stopped.

She loved the summers best, when her father would pack her up along with his maps and tools and his ridiculous pith helmet, and they would travel to someplace wild and new. She didn't care much about the antiquities he was obsessed with, but she loved the stories behind them, and even as a young girl, she had a shrewd head for haggling. She always knew down to the piastre how much a piece was worth, and how much the disreputable shopkeepers in Cairo or Haifa or Beirut would be willing to pay. She managed the work crews and even helped with the digging when she was bored with her books. She kept the roof over their heads and the clothes on their backs when her father would have frittered away every penny chasing the Ark.

She made sure they spent time at the seaside at the end of each season, where he could rest after another fruitless summer of searching. She lived with sand between her toes and grit in her hair, brown as a berry after so many months in the sun without a hat on.

Marion's childhood wasn't easy—her mother died giving birth to her and her father was absent-minded even when he wasn't wrapped up in fantasies of ancient relics—but it was good. She was loved, and she learned what she needed to know to survive, which was more than public school ever taught her.

*

**II.**

Marion knew that insisting she wasn't a child would only make her sound like one, so she kept the outburst behind her teeth and ignored all her father's warnings about his students in general, and Indiana Jones in particular. Jones was brilliant, he'd say, but always had his eye on the main chance, Marion, and nothing would stand in his way.

Marion thought she might, though. She certainly put herself in his way as often as she could. She liked that he didn't look as smart as he was, that he didn't think she was dumb because she was young or a girl, that he talked to her like an adult, and listened like she was too. When she wanted more than talk, he was happy to oblige, with no false qualms or specious sanctimony about her age when she was as eager for it as he was. 

She learned from him, too, things she couldn't find in books or school.

When she was with Indy, she was Mary Pickford or Gloria Swanson, and he was Douglas Fairbanks—charming, funny, glamorous—always up for a good time, and the trouble that inevitably followed. 

And then Indy took off, looking out for his career after Abner threatened him for dallying with her. It broke her heart, and her father's in the bargain. They were left with each other, the way they always were.

Marion sobbed herself dry over him, and over the loss of that image of herself as sophisticated, charming—a real swell dame.

She continued to manage her father's career, such as it was, as he slid further into obsession and alcohol, until he died with nothing in Nepal, and she took over the bar in the town where they'd been living. She couldn't afford to go back to the States, and there was nothing left for her there anyway but some musty old books and some raggedy old dreams. She was going to make the tavern pay, and she was going to go home in style.

She always knew she'd see Indy again, and she decided that when she did, she'd be the one who walked away, and he'd be the one left broken-hearted.

*

**III.**

Indy came strutting back into her life, and it was good—no, if she was being honest, it was _great_. For a while. He treated her like an equal and challenged her to keep up, and she did, every step of the way. But life wasn't all punching Nazis and avoiding the wrath of God, and somehow the quiet times were the hardest. 

At first, she thought she wasn't cut out to be a professor's wife in Connecticut, and by the time she figured out she was, or that she wanted to be, it turned out that Indy didn't want her at all—he left before they could make it official. She told herself it was better that way. She was done crying her heart out over Indiana Jones.

And then she discovered she was pregnant. 

At first she thought about tracking Indy down, making him marry her and take some responsibility for the baby. Maybe that was what they'd needed to keep them together. But she knew it was just a foolish daydream—it would never _work_. If he didn't want to be with her, then she didn't want him. It wouldn't be fair to the kid, either, and now she had to think about that, too. It was hard, at first, to remember she was making decisions for two, but as her pregnancy progressed, she found she couldn't ignore it.

Marion knew that Abner had loved her, but she'd basically raised herself, and she turned out okay. Except for the part where she was single, broke, and pregnant, but that could have happened to anyone.

She left New York, then. Took a steamer to England and got a job working at the British Museum—they were happy to give Abner Ravenwood's daughter a place on the staff, even if that place was typing up press releases and liaising with rich American tourists who wouldn't know a sarcophagus from a Chevy.

Giving birth was the hardest thing she'd ever done; she gasped and sweated her way through eleven hours of labor that felt like it was never going to end. She was tired and scared and alone, and her body felt like it didn't even belong to her anymore. She felt a sudden pang of sympathy for her mother, for whom she'd never had much sympathy before, who'd died after such an experience. She didn't know how to be this new version of herself, and there was no time to learn. But then they put her baby boy in her arms and she knew she'd never give him up, never quit, never let the world treat him the way it treated her, not while her heart was still beating and her hands could still work.

**Author's Note:**

> The request was: One of my very favorite heroines is hands down Marion Ravenwood. She's smart, tough, resourceful, mildly damaged, and wonderful. I would love to see her early years tagging along on digs with her father, what was her childhood like? And then later, when she was pregnant and on her own, how did she cope? I'd just love to see any snippet of her life with or without Indy.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Cure for Anything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29432643) by [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer)




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